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To the student of history and human affairs, one of the most interesting and fascinating observations is the development of ideas. This process is the more striking for its close analogy to the development of living forms, beginning with a germ thought and expanding by the double power of its own energy and that of its surroundings, until it reaches such a stage of maturity as to reproduce by giving off the seed thought out of which distinct ideas grow.; A close similarity to this life history of ideas in the individual mind, is found in group, national, and race ideas.; Throughout an undergraduate course, majoring in history and electing as much philosophy as possible, this field was very attractive to the writer of this paper. After graduation in 1905 his interest was deepened by frequent discussions with the Rev. John Oliver, who was then preparinga graduate thesis on the related theme, "Why Ideas Live."; While not attempting to treat a subject of such familiarity, with entire originality, an effort of this paper will be to avoid a mere collection of quotations hyphenated by original connectives.; As our interest is in the process of their growth and not in the ideas themselves, we shall be at liberty to observe in any fields of thought which shall offer good examples, and our interest in tile character of the ideas examined shall be secondary to the inquiry, how they grow.; Beginning with the proof of the ground of our thesis, already suggested, that ideas are a growth, we shall proceed to examine the process of their growth, first in the individual mind, then in groups, nations, and races. Throughout these examinations an effort will be made to discover such uniformities as would indicate a law for the growth of ideas.; Before the subject proper is entered upon we should define the important terms of the thesis. Broadly speaking, "psychology is the science of mind;" but in developing a science of mind, two diametrically opposite methods are now in vogue, introspection and external experiment. The first deals primarily with consciousness and performs its experiments in this inner sphere; the second deals first with physical stimuli and physical manifestations of mental action. Our psychology will be of an introspective character, believing, to use a parody, that the only proper study of mentality is mind. By introspection, however, we shall connote all of what is usually termed "inner experience" and to whatever degree inner experience gets its materials from the outer world, we shall be concerned to examine the sensuous contact between them. Our point of insistence is that the inner experience is the legitimate realm of psychology.; By "growth" as applied to ideas we shall mean such change as helps to attain a beneficial end. The term growth thus applied has this emphatic difference from its usual meaning, it may as well stand for diminution as expansion. For the meaning of "idea ", we shall adhere to Locke's unimprobable definition, "The objects of the understanding when a man thinks."; The progress of our study has led us into such wide and diverse fields that we have been compelled to condense into a paragraph observations which it might take a series of volumes to put forth in detail. For this, however, we offer no apology, for we seek to set forth how ideas grow in the large field of human thought and not in any one or few of its specialized corners.